Since discovering eBay (yeah, I know, really late to this party and all) I’ve been on something of a tear picking up books I either used to have back in the day or wanted and never got or, if I’m being honest, simply buying stuff that was released at a time I found the stuff around it fascinating.
Now, I’m not going to say it’s all top tier stuff. It’s not. But, dammit, I like it.
As I’ve been picking up horror titles released by DC Comics in the 1970’s (favorites of mine), I came to a realization and, as I’m on a Facebook group devoted to horror titles, I posted this realization. I find it fascinating enough to reprint and expand on it here.
Even if you’re not a fan of the titles released back then, I hope you find this stuff interesting!
Below are four covers to DC’s The Witching Hour! horror book. From left to right, we have Witching Hour 45, 31, 52, and 55.
I’m sensing a pattern here!
The first two Witching Hour covers -both drawn by the incredible Nick Cardy- were so similar as to almost be identical. I was very familiar with the first but until a couple of weeks ago didn’t realize the second with the witch, actually came out first.
When I saw that “witch” cover, I immediately realized it was virtually identical to the one with the red demon-like character. Hell, even the dialogue is virtually identical in both covers. Both illustrations are by the incredibly talented Nick Cardy and upon realizing they used similar tropes, a subsequent realization hit me…
There are many DC horror titles released during the 1970’s which feature this particular trope of a person coming through a door/threshold (often they are on the left side of the page) and, beyond that door/threshold is something “evil”. The evil things is often presented on the right side of the page.
With this realization I started going over my collection and found the trope in several other titles. The two Witching Hour covers below the original ones, for issues 52 and 55, use that trope well. Again, your “innocent” coming through a door/threshold on the left and, on the right, something sinister and evil which they are about to run smack into.
Below are a few more examples and, in this case, I wanted to highlight how the trope is used but minor modifications are also added to it. The first cover below is for The Unexpected #131. This cover follows the trope exactly: You have your “innocent” character on the left, a door they’re about to go through, and the “evil” they’re about to encounter on the right side of the page.
The other three covers, however, show mild variations of the trope. The second cover, from Ghosts #27, modifies the trope a little. The “innocent” character is roughly in the middle of the page and the evil they are encountering after passing through the door/threshold is all around and in front of them. Of note too is the fact that often the innocent is about to encounter the evil but hasn’t yet (anticipation, I suppose!) but in this case, the characters are already reacting in horror to what they see in front of them.
The last two covers, for The Unexpected 154 and The Witching Hour 46, share minor modifications from the original trope. The “innocent” character is on the right side of the illustration and going through the threshold. The evil thing is on the left side of each cover. As before, the innocent character is about to be shocked but isn’t quite there yet.
Now, just to be clear: Not every cover of every DC horror book employed this trope. Enough of them did so as to make me realize it, but this wasn’t something you saw in every horror book.
Secondly, I point this out not to put down the artists -frankly, I absolutely LOVE all this stuff!- but rather to examine the types of covers and tropes used during that time.
Clearly this type of cover was a success for DC comics and the reuse of the trope further shows this to be the case.
Either way, I’m loving picking up all these books and stumbling upon this particularly fascinating -to me anyway!- realization.
